David Jackson - Pariah

‘Put your hands behind your back.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me, you dumb Irish fuck. Put your hands behind your back.’

Doyle looks at Bartok. Wonders why it is that the end of one predicament always seems to lead straight into another.

When Doyle has clasped his hands behind him, Bartok signals his goon to approach. The man slings his rifle over his shoulder, then pulls a length of cord from his pocket and begins to tie Doyle’s wrists together.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Doyle asks.

‘Shut up,’ says Bartok. He snaps his fingers at the other man, who tosses him something soft and dark. Bartok moves behind Doyle, slips the cloth bag over his head.

Oh, Jesus, Doyle thinks. Not like this. Not after all I’ve been through.

He feels something hard press into the back of his skull.

‘You know what this is?’ Bartok says, his voice muffled through the cloth.

‘A gun.’

‘Yeah, a gun. Your fucking gun.’

My gun. Aimed at me again. This is starting to get repetitive.

‘We made a deal, Bartok.’

Ah, yes. The deal. Me getting my life back in return for handing Bartok the killer of his brother. Lucas sure got a shock tonight when I turned up at his door offering that one. Now where did I get the idea he could ever be a man of his word?

‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you, Doyle? Think I don’t know shit. To you, Kurt was the brains and I was just the dumb sidekick. Ain’t that right, Doyle?’

‘No, actually your dastardly ruse never fooled me for a minute. I always suspected you were the criminal mastermind and Kurt was just your puppet.’

For his impudence, Doyle receives another smack in the mouth, rattling his teeth.

‘Oh, you are so pushing it, Doyle. You are so asking to die here.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Doyle asks, finding it harder to speak now. ‘You’re gonna kill me anyhow.’

The laugh from Bartok seems to fill the clearing. Doyle can picture the forest denizens deciding they want nothing to do with whatever insane creature is issuing that fearful noise.

When Bartok speaks next, his voice is just an inch from Doyle’s ear. Doyle can feel the man’s warm breath pushing through the cloth.

‘Kill you? I ain’t gonna kill you, you stupid fucking mick. I want you alive. And you know why? To show you that I’m smarter than you think. I’m gonna help you, Doyle.’

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘Oh, yes, you do. Think about your situation. Think about your ex-boss lying in pieces behind that rock over there. Think about his missus with your bullet in her brain. She’s got great tits, by the way — I copped a feel on the way out.’

Doyle tries to suppress his anger. His mind struggles to work out where Bartok’s going with this.

Something — probably his gun — taps against his skull.

‘This,’ says Bartok, ‘gives you a story. You say that the lieutenant tied you up and put the hood on your head. That he was going to shoot you and dump you in that hole over there. And then somebody else came along. You have no idea who. You heard noises and that’s it. You got that, Doyle?’

Doyle doesn’t answer. He feels his coat being opened, a hand reaching into his inside pocket.

‘And this,’ Bartok continues, ‘gives you the rest of what you need to get out of the fix you’re in.’

‘I don’t want it. Whatever it is, I don’t want it.’

Bartok laughs again, but it’s more of a chuckle this time.

‘We were quits,’ Bartok says, ‘but now you owe me. You owe me big time.’

Doyle swallows down some blood. ‘I don’t owe you shit. Take your crap out of my pocket. I’ll take my chances.’

‘It stays, Doyle. And I think you’ll use it. But even if you don’t, you still owe me.’

‘Yeah? How d’you figure that?’

Another cruel laugh. ‘Because I got something else up my sleeve. Something you don’t want anybody to know about. Any ideas yet?’

Doyle’s mind races, but doesn’t seem to get off the starting line.

Bartok’s voice drops to a whisper. Although carried on lungfuls of air that feel almost burning against Doyle’s ear, the words themselves chill him to the bone.

The breathing moves away. When Bartok speaks again it sounds as though he’s standing up again.

‘Think about that, Doyle. Not so much the dumb brother now, huh? We’ll talk again soon. Oh, and one other thing before I go. .’

Doyle waits for more words he doesn’t want to hear. What he gets is something hard smashing into the side of his skull, and then a feeling of sinking into the soil as though it’s quicksand, swallowing him up and closing over him.

He thinks he’s dead.

When he opens his eyes he sees nothing, feels nothing. His brain sends out commands to the rest of his body, but nothing responds. It’s like he’s become some kind of disembodied soul, floating in a featureless limbo.

Gradually, he realizes that his limbs are moving, but the cold has numbed them — turned them into unfeeling slabs of frozen meat. He manages to roll into a sitting position, then starts pumping his legs along the ground to get the blood circulating again.

Next, he flexes his biceps, rubs his arms up and down his back, wrings his hands together until they start to thaw a little. When he has finally re-established the perimeter of his own body, he goes to work on the cord binding his wrists. He frees his arms more quickly than expected, and when he pulls off the hood he sees why: the lack of sensation in his hands meant that he didn’t notice he was sloughing off layers of skin as he pulled and twisted them against the rope.

He stands up. Shakily at first, he stamps his feet and slaps his arms across his body, trying to dispel the iciness that seems to have sunk right down into his bones. Each movement sends jolts of pain coursing through his battered body.

He burrows his hands deep into his pockets, then scans the clearing. It’s so quiet, so peaceful here. It’s almost impossible to believe that this place was recently witness to such extreme, sickening violence.

He knows he has to look, has to confirm what he already knows to be true. He’s a cop. He has seen numerous corpses, in various states of decay and putrefaction. But as he circles the rock and glances at what lies behind, even he feels the bile rise in his throat.

He performs a quick search of the area. There’s no sign of either his gun or the lieutenant’s, but what he does find is Franklin’s flashlight. He switches it on, but just before he aims for the woods he takes another look at the hole he started digging. The site that almost became his grave.

With no idea of the route, and nothing that looks familiar, it takes him a long time to get back to the house. When he finally arrives, he stamps across the back porch, enters through the kitchen, then goes straight to the living room. He wonders why he finds it surprising that Nadine is still there in the armchair. Still half-naked, still staring sightlessly, still dead.

There’s one slight difference: Nadine’s skirt is pushed up around her waist, and Doyle’s Glock has been tucked under the waistband of her panties. A parting message from Bartok.

‘Sonofabitch!’ Doyle mutters.

Gingerly, he retrieves his gun, then smoothes Nadine’s skirt back into a more respectable position. As if it makes any difference to her.

He looks long and hard at the face of Nadine, tries to see past the mask of blood she now wears. He pictures her laughing, smiling, teasing, flirting. He tries to comprehend how such a vision of beauty can be the trigger for such a tidal wave of destruction. How she could possibly have acted as the inspiration for all that hate, all that evil. He wonders, too, whether she managed to convince herself that it was none of her doing, or whether she suspected the real reasons for what was happening to Doyle and chose to say nothing.